As surprising as the fact may seem, the healthcare industry is moving like molasses to adopt cloud technology, despite the rapid pace at which other industries are doing so.

CDW’s 2013 State of the Cloud Report surveyed IT professionals to explore what factors drive the shift to the cloud, what types of applications organizations are taking to the cloud and what benefits (beyond cost savings) they are achieving.

According to findings presented, only 35 percent of health IT professionals surveyed revealed that their organization is presently using cloud computing.

The biggest impeding factors to cloud adoption in healthcare include:

Concerns with security of proprietary data/applications (51%)

Concerns with performance of cloud services (36%)

Concerns with technical aspects of integrating cloud applications/infrastructure with legacy(31%)

Stephen Braat, general manager of cloud solutions at CDW, believes that lingering security concerns must be addressed before adoption is impeded further.

“In our experience, cloud providers can achieve this by describing the security policies, controls, and infrastructure they enforce on behalf of the customer and by architecting a solution that mitigates security issues – real or perceived,” Braat says. “For example, and to no surprise, the industries where security tends to lead the discussion are healthcare and financial services. Providers in those industries have achieved early success with security in business applications via private and hybrid cloud solutions.”

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